


Imagine surrender

by givebackmylifecas



Category: La casa de papel | Money Heist (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Heavy Angst, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-07
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25128748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/givebackmylifecas/pseuds/givebackmylifecas
Summary: 5 times Martín realises he isn’t needed and one time he really needs someone
Relationships: Berlin | Andrés de Fonollosa/Palermo | Martín Berrote, Helsinki | Mirko Dragic/Palermo | Martín Berrote
Comments: 22
Kudos: 61





	Imagine surrender

**Author's Note:**

> TWs for canonical character death (mentioned), canon-typical language, character death that can be construed as suicide
> 
> Fic title from the Richard Siken poem "Seaside Improvisation"

**One**

It’s been a long time coming. The fights had steadily been getting worse, his father rarely even coming home anymore. Martín knows he’s only a couple of streets over. The whole neighbourhood has been talking about nothing else for weeks. How Martín’s father is living with another woman and with Martín’s mother at the same time.

He’s been expecting the divorce since the first time his mother threw a vase at his father’s head, the words she screamed at him laced with pain, betrayal, and cheap vodka.

It doesn’t make it easier though, to watch from where he’s crouched in a corner, listening to his mother – this proud, strong, unmoving woman – beg his father not to go. Martín’s father leaves anyway, of course he does, he picks up the suitcase holding the last of his belongings and walks out of the room without a backward glance at his soon to be ex-wife or his only son.

Martín watches as his mother collapses onto their aged, faded sofa and cries bitterly. He crawls out from behind the large potted plant and makes his way over to her, nervous like he’s never felt before.

“Mama?” he asks quietly, hands curling in the hem of his grubby t-shirt. “Mama are you okay?”

She doesn’t look at him, or in any way acknowledge his presence, continuing to cry. He climbs up onto the sofa, wrapping his skinny arms around her neck.

“It’ll be okay mama, you still have me,” he tells her, petting her hair, only to be pushed off.

“And what good is having you?” she asks, coldly, her red rimmed eyes staring at him. “Are you going to put food on the table? Are you going to keep a roof over our heads?”

Martín shrinks back, shaking his head.

“Exactly, now go to your room, I don’t need you here right now,” she says and he does as he’s told, sliding off the sofa.

He looks back once, when he reaches the door and finds her staring out the window, her back to him. He wonders if she’s looking to see whether his father is coming back. He wonders if his father will come back for him.

**Two**

Andrés kisses him. Andrés kisses him and wraps his arms around Martín and he presses him to the wall and he tells him that he loves him and then he takes it all away again.

“I’d give anything to feel that,” Andrés tells him. “But it’s impossible. We can't be together”

Martín shakes his head. “No, you do, you said you love me.”

“Of course I love you, but this, I have to do without you,” Andrés says. “My brother is right, we have to part ways. And we have to scrap the plan.”

“You’re going to make photocopies in the Royal Mint, right?” Martín accuses. “Let me help, you know I can. Please, Andrés, I suggested melting gold, but I’ll do this too. As long as it’s with you I’ll do whatever plan you want!”

Andrés shakes his head. “No Martín, I can’t include you in this. I have to leave you. It’s for love, for brotherhood. For the commitment I have to you. Leave and heal the wound. Sometimes distance is the only way to find peace.”

“Andrés, please,” Martín begs but the other man shakes his head.

“I’m sorry Martín, but this is something I need to do on my own, without you.”

Andrés leaves and Martín watches him go and wonders whether he’ll ever be enough to make the people he loves stay.

**Three**

“Wait, go over it again,” Denver says and Martín groans.

He wants to shout, to shake this… boy until he understands, but before he can do anything, Sergio is stepping forward.

“Denver, it works like this,” Sergio says and the proceeds to explain Martín’s plan, the one that came from his brain, the one thing he’d had left of Andrés, to this group of morons.

Finally, Martín sees clarity on Denver’s face and he sighs. When the others leave the classroom, dismissed by Sergio, Martín turns to the man he’d once considered a brother.

“Tell me again, why you needed me for this heist?” he jokes and Sergio shrugs.

“It wouldn’t have been right to do it without you. The plan was as much yours as it was Andrés’,” he says and Martín frowns.

“So you’re saying you don’t actually need my engineering experience?” he questions and Sergio sighs.

“I thought you were only an engineer for about two years before you ran off with Andrés? Besides, someone who understands the plan needs to be inside the bank and it can’t be me.”

Martín watches as Sergio gathers up his papers. “Do you want help with any of the other planning? Andrés and I spent years doing this, you know?”

Sergio shakes his head. “No, I don’t think that will be necessary.”

He walks out of the classroom, leaving Martín staring after him.

He’d known Sergio didn’t want him involved in the last heist, that Sergio didn’t like this plan because it wasn’t his own. He is also aware that Sergio feels guilty about those things, that he feels sorry for Martín, that he regrets not being able to save Andrés. He just never thought that those were the only reasons Sergio wanted Martín involved in the bank heist.

At the very least, Sergio had never questioned his intelligence, his engineering skills. But now, now it’s become clear to him that given enough time Sergio could probably have worked out most of the calculations by himself. Martín is just the person he can puppeteer from outside the bank.

**Four**

“Helsi, I love you,” Nairobi says, her dark eyes shining with emotion and Martín hates her for the depth of her sincerity. “I love you so much that I would have a family with you.”

She does love Helsinki, Martín has known it for a while now, since the monastery certainly. He’d enjoyed lording it over her, the fact that he had Helsinki in a way she never can. But despite that he knows that unwittingly, she’s been doing the same thing.

Helsinki may have deluded himself into thinking he has feelings for Martín, but what he and Nairobi share is real. They’re friends, more than that even, they’re family. And while Martín was busy trying to tell Helsinki that what they had between them was casual, stress-relief only, he’d managed to push away the only person in the gang who might have had any regard for him.

So he fights Nairobi, turning her words around, using them to make her look ridiculous until she lashes out, attacking him with the one thing she knows will hurt.

And when it’s over, Martín watches Nairobi leave and Helsinki follow her. It makes sense after all. They’re no longer sleeping together and Martín knows from experience that you can live without sex, it’s not necessary for survival. But friendship, familial bonds? You’re lost without them. While he wants Helsinki to have those things, understands how he needs them, he can’t help but envy him, can’t help but to want them for himself

**5**

He’s the leader of this ridiculous, suicidal heist. It’s the one thing Sergio allowed him, maybe out of some sort of twisted tribute to Andrés. But now they’re taking even that from him.

All he’s trying to do is help Nairobi, to stop the police from letting her bleed out, or saving her just to interrogate her and make sure she never sees the light of day again. To protect them all from anything she may say, whether willingly or not.

But then there are guns pointed in his face and people yelling at him and he gives in. They can all go fuck themselves, because he’s done.

He tried, he really did. They were his team, he cared about them more than he’d cared about anything in recent years and they threw it back in his face.

So let Tokyo lead them now, whatever happens next isn’t his problem. Not anymore.

He takes off the stupid eye patch and changes into the suit he brought. He combs his hair, he shaves, and he walks out of the bank with a briefcase full of muffins.

**+1**

No one runs after him, no one comes to save him, no one does anything at all.

He walks out of the bank before Matias can say anything and despite the briefcase, the police have clearly been ordered to shoot on sight.

He takes two, three, four bullets to the chest in quick succession and the force of them knock him backwards.

He hits the ground and the briefcase flies from his hand and the police don’t come any closer – he can hear them calling for the bomb squad – and no one comes from the bank and no one is there to hear him choke on his own blood.

The whole world is there to watch though, countless cameras pointed at him, countless voices calling from the barricades, countless reporters recounting what just happened. And none of them even know his name.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah idek... talk to me here, on tumblr ([@hefellfordean](https://hefellfordean.tumblr.com)) or twitter ([@angstypalermo](https://twitter.com/angstypalermo))


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